Tom Brinkman - To The General Assembly

To The General Assembly

Brinkman defeated the candidate endorsed by the Republican party in the GOP primary in 2000 for the 37th District seat in the Ohio House, which was Anderson Township, the Hyde Park and Mount Lookout sections of Cincinnati, and the city of Norwood . A Brinkman supporter was upset by the party's endorsement process: "All we wanted was a free, open process of endorsement, and we didn't get that," said Christopher Finney . In the primary, Steve Adams, the endorsed candidate, received 9,344 votes and Brinkman 11,127. In the November general election, he faced Democrat Les Mann, a security guard at General Electric's aircraft engine plant in Evendale who previously had run for Congress against Rob Portman, and Natural Law candidate Jim Donaldson. The vote was 35,245 for Brinkman (66.7%), 2,029 for Donaldson (3.8%), and 15,531 for Mann (29.4%).

Brinkman ran for reelection in 2002 to what redistricting had made the 34th District, which included the Mount Washington, Hyde Park, and Mount Lookout sections of Cincinnati, part of Columbia Township, all of Anderson Township, and the municipalities of Fairfax, Newtown and Terrace Park . He faced no opposition in the May 7 primary and was opposed in the November 5 general election by Democrat David Schaff, a twenty-four-year-old assistant to Hamilton County commissioner Todd Portune. Schaff said his opponent was "someone who's spent more time saying what he's against than working for what he's for." Schaff was endorsed by The Cincinnati Post, which wrote

Tom Brinkman's opposition to almost everything undercuts his credibility, and does a disservice to both the district and the region. His reflexive opposition to much government spending, his willingness to tolerate a tattered social services safety net, his advocacy of an entirely unregulated concealed carry gun permit system, we submit, are out of step even with such a thoroughly Republican constituency.

That year Brinkman called on Republican voters to cast their ballots for Democrat Tim Hagan over Republican Governor Bob Taft in his reelection bid because of Taft's selection of Jennette Bradley as his running mate; many conservatives felt she was too liberal for the party. The Cincinnati Enquirer's Peter Bronson labeled Brinkman "Kamikaze Tom" for this action, but nevertheless, Brinkman was easily reelected over Schaff by a vote of 23,748 to 13,896.